A conversation with Hesiod (5)

Nevertheless I shall not fail to defend my poetry against you. It is not, I think, proper to examine poetry in minute detail, nor to demand complete perfection down to every syllable of what is said, nor again to criticise bitterly any unconscious oversight in the flow of the composition. No, you must realise that we include much for the sake of both metre and euphony, and often the verse itself has somehow let in some things, they fit so smoothly. But you are robbing us of our greatest possession—I mean freedom and poetic licence. You are blind to the other beauties of poetry, and pick out a few splinters and thorns and seek out handles for captious criticism. You are not alone in this, nor am I the only victim. Many others pick the poetry of my fellow-craftsman Homer utterly to pieces, pointing out similar niggling details, the merest trifles.